IFTTT goes mobile, wants to do your Internet heavy lifting for you

IFTTT (If This Then That) has been trying to automate your Internet life via the browser for a while now, but the service has finally gone mobile with the launch of their first app for iPhone. In addition to the ton of services that IFTTT already supports, bringing it to the iPhone opens up three new channels for users, by allowing integration with the iOS Reminders app, as well as Contacts and Photos.

The basic premise behind IFTTT is creating simple 'recipes' as they call them, based on two sets of parameters to automate processes. For example, if I take a photo in Instagram, then upload that photo to my SkyDrive. Automation for the Internet, but without the scary parts. Each channel – of which there are many – has some preloaded recipes for you to put to work, but you can also create your own to suit your needs then share it with the world.

The app itself is pretty slick, and really nicely designed. I'm a new user of the service, so I popped a few test recipes in there to see what happened, and so far, so good. To put it to good work, I've asked it to upload my Instagram pictures to SkyDrive, which is working like a charm, and I've got a bunch of "Email me when..." circumstances that seem to be going well too. Give it a try by grabbing the iPhone app from the App Store now, and drop your favorite recipes into the comments below for us all to try!

Okay, that was my question. What *triggers* IFTTT to work? I put in a test one to email me whenever I create a new contact. How would that trigger? I have to run the app? Something like the weather forcast being SMS'd to me each day I can understand not requiring you to run the app because it could be run server-side on their end. The app certainly looks interesting if it has in it what you'd like to do.

It triggers when you open the app, and you can toggle a location setting where it will wake up when you move from one location to another. The location trigger is cheating..making it wake up as you walk around, but it's a cheat that they allowed, so...

Cloud based ones like my Instagram --> SkyDrive seems to work fine. But then, they aren't relying on the app either. My IFTTT account hooks into the other two and just does the work for me. For that kind of stuff I can see this being a real help to me